Desert Southwest gardening can be sustainable, smart and spectacular.

Tag Archives: rain barrels

In several posts, I’ve reiterated how important it is to water slowly and deeply, especially for vegetables and xeric plants. Just last week, I touted the benefits of drip irrigation as a way to accomplish deep watering and ensure that you water under plants, not over them.

I babbled so much about drip irrigation that the folks at Garden Drip System by Thombo offered to send me a free Garden Drip hose (tape) to test. The drip hose differs from typical soaker hoses in its material. Instead of the heavier, rubber-like round tubing, the drip hose comes as flat plastic tape. In fact, the company mailed it to me in a small padded envelope, not a box.

The Garden Drip Hose rolls up to a compact size, so it’s small and light for shipping, storing and lugging around.

Different from soaker hoses

The drip tape material is lightweight and compact. That helped when I lugged it back and forth to try it in a few places. It didn’t take long for the rolls from packaging to completely flatten (as opposed to a regular hose I purchased recently, which keeps coiling around my leg, kinking and knocking into my delicate bean plants!)

Anyway, back to the Garden Drip. The tape is designed so that a tiny hole emits drips of water about every foot. That’s another way in which it differs from a soaker hose, which basically is scored all the way down its length. Having said that, you can control where the emitters go to some extent, but you still will get some drip between plants if you have wells rather than rows. The tape is designed to only curve slightly, not make intricate curves and 90-degree turns around a garden. The in-between drips were not a big deal, though, because the soaking is so slow and steady that I had no pooled water anywhere.

Tiny holes emit drips of water from the striped top of the tape, making installation super easy and the flow nice and slow.

Little pressure needed

I laid out the drip tape to water some vegetables and roses near my house and set my phone timer for four hours. It was nice to work while I watered. The pressure was terrific once I easily spotted and flattened any slight twists in the hose. Once the tape is in place, it’s unobtrusive. The polyethylene tape should stand up to beating sun better than traditional soaker hoses. I imagine you could easily place a few stakes along its path to keep it secure, but it would be best to do so while it’s running. That’s because the tape looks flat when it arrives and you first lay it out, but the shape rounded out as soon as I added water to the tape, filling it all the way to the end of the 50 feet.

The thin strip of tape fit nicely under the zucchini plant and was flexible enough to curve slightly with the beds.

Speaking of pressure, I wanted to test the hose with my rain barrel, but the only barrel I have with a good hose connection is too far from my garden, so it’s unfair to readers and Garden Drip to say how it works with a 50-foot hose between the barrel and the 50-foot drip tape, not to mention a fairly inexpensive barrel and a barely downhill slope. I would suggest the shortest possible length if you want to try it with a barrel, simply because you don’t have any mechanical pressure like you will from a faucet.

I hooked the tape up to my hose for the best possible pressure in a location too far from barrels with faucets. They were simple to connect.

The Garden Drip comes in lengths of 25, 50, 75 and 100 feet. And if you watch the company’s videos, you can get fancy with shortening, repairing and customizing the hose.

Bottom line: This is the perfect way to water rows of home garden and small farm crops. It is slow and steady as promised, lightweight and effective at drip irrigation and saving water. It won’t work as well as a custom drip system for a xeric garden with plants scattered around, but if you’ve got some fairly straight rows or beds to water, this is the way to go! You can irrigate less often and more efficiently, saving water and helping your plants’ roots become more healthy.

For two years, I’ve watched rain pour off the roof of an old shed in our orchard and hated to see it go to waste. And our vegetable garden is only about 20 yards from the shed, so it just made sense to capture some of the water. This weekend, as storms approached, we got around to adding rain gutters to the back of the shed to catch some of the precious rain in a barrel.

I love this old shed. We use it for storage, but it had no rain gutters for all of the runoff.

First of all, this was a relatively easy and inexpensive project. We already had the barrel, which cost about $80, in the shed. One of the drawbacks of the barrel type is that it tends to leak along its outside seams. Tim caulked and duct taped it for safe measure. The gutter, outlet and brackets came to about another $60. We had old hoses to reuse.

The metal gutter Tim bought matches the barrel and the shed, so it doesn’t affect the character of the shed much. We attached it to the joist beams along the back, just under the roof. See how close all that wasted water is to the garden?

Tim picked up two pieces of metal gutter, which covered most of the 24-foot roof, some slip joints to connect pieces, two end pieces and the outlet. The most time-consuming part of the project was bending the metal gutter pieces to fit together. Then we caulked them.

We used metal brackets to connect the gutter to joists on the shed. Some of the joists were beginning to rot at the top, so we connected the brackets to the strongest ones and then reinforced the gutter with screws in other spots.

Metal brackets secure the gutter on both sides every 18 inches or so.

We sat the barrel on a found, fairly flat rock for some ground clearance around the lower faucet control and plugged the other hole with PVC pipe (this barrel also had a busted faucet). I’ll only be needing the hose connection. The garden is downhill from the barrel, which makes the hose flow more easily. And we stacked a few rocks around the sides of the barrel to help with drainage and mud control from overflow.

Because the ground was so high in relation to the back of the shed, we haven’t bothered yet with a downspout; the outlet is only a few feet from the top of the barrel. We figured that if it missed, we could repurpose some old gutter we cut off the house when fitting barrels on it. But we found out that wasn’t necessary! When the rain came, it flowed right into the barrel and filled it up.

The barrel installed and filled to the brim after nearly an inch of rain later that day!

I realize this barrel won’t hold enough to water my garden all of the time, but it helps. And if it works well, we might chain another barrel to it next year. I don’t worry too much about using water from the metal roof on my vegetables. First, I water the soil, not the plant’s leaves. Second, there has been plenty of research done on safety of rain barrel water for edibles. We don’t have pollution where I live, and I’m using well water if I don’t use rain water, so it’s not like I’m choosing water from a roof over city tap water. I make sure I rinse all harvested food.

This was a fun, easy and rewarding project. With the rain we received, I haven’t had to use the stored water yet, but I’m sure I will need it by the end of the week!

The drought is easing here as April showers finally arrived and turned into a few May thunderstorms. Our rain barrels are overflowing, and it makes me happy, but crazy. (I need to check and see if I say “xxx makes me crazy” on every post. This is a troublesome pattern.) Anyway, I hate to see any of that precious resource go to waste. In reality, I know it’s watering the natural grass, trees and plants, flowing into the river, and adding to our water table. But I want to collect as much of it as I can to avoid use of our well water for most of the year.

This is a basic, 50-gallon rain barrel used as needed for xeric ornamentals and herbs. I’ll use it soon for some vegetables.

From 30 percent to 50 percent of public or potable water in a given community can go to landscaping. I know we could use more than that between our fruit trees and vegetable gardens. It’s imperative that we all continue to find ways to cut the amount. I tackle that as often as I can on this blog, but for now, I want to focus on rainwater collection and safety of rainwater for edibles.

Rain barrels and cisterns

Our two 50-gallon rain barrels just don’t cut it. And I have big plans to add more, including a huge above-ground or underground cistern. Most homeowners use barrels similar to ours to water ornamental gardens. We’ve found that they’re easy to install, and work pretty well, although Tim has had to replace the faucet on some. You can add a hose to the bottom of the barrel or fill a watering can from the spigot. The barrels cost around $80 to $135, depending on quality, size and appearance.

Our basic barrels have a spigot for filling water pails and a hose connection.

Cisterns cost more, and generally are used by commercial operations. But if we ever get our greenhouse (see my comment above about what makes me crazy, as in not having one yet), I think it would be difficult and irresponsible to add year-round gardening without having rainwater collection. A 1,000-gallon tank runs close to $600 or more, and you can expect to pay up to $5,000 for a 10,000-gallon cistern, plus excavation if it’s going underground. Of course, with all cisterns, you have to consider some installation costs, plus shipping or transportation and permits in some cases.

Roof water for vegetable gardens

In the past, I heard that roof water was not safe for watering edibles, and I avoided using rain barrel water from my tar and gravel roof on herbs or vegetables. But we now have a metal roof, and I feel comfortable using the barrels to water ornamentals and edibles. I wanted to back that up with science, however, so I found some great information from Rutgers University’s New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.

A metal roof, gutters and downspout bring water to our two rain barrels. The barrel has a screen to prevent debris or birds from getting inside.

The study tested safety of rain barrel water for irrigation of a vegetable garden. In short, they found that rainwater collected from asphalt shingle roofs met irrigation water standards, with a few exceptions. E. coli sometimes appeared in the samples because of droppings from birds, squirrels or other animals. And rain barrel water is not safe to drink, but is considered safe to use to water the soil (roots) of your vegetables. The authors of the study recommended a few practices to ensure the rain water remains safe:

Clean rain barrels with a 3-percent bleach solution before collecting water you’ll use for herbs and vegetables. Since you need to empty the barrel before winter (unless you are in a mild climate), you can clean it before each spring. Or simply add household bleach at a rate of 1/8 teaspoon per gallon of water twice a month during heavy rainfall). It’s diluted enough to prevent any harm to plants after about 24 hours.

Pour the rain water directly onto the soil, not on the plant’s leaves, or use it in drip irrigation.

Water in the morning and harvest at night. This gives the sun’s rays time to disinfect leaves. Morning watering is a better xeric technique, anyway.

It also helps to clean your gutters before spring rains hit, just to cut down on dirt and debris.

I’m a member of the Garden Writers Association, and one of the benefits to membership is access to research conducted by GWA’s foundation on consumer gardening trends. The Fall 2013 report explored how gardeners conserve water and provided three years of historical data for comparison. I have to say that the results gave me pause.

About 68 percent of consumers surveyed said they have a lawn or garden in 2013 and of those surveyed, here are the top ways they conserved water this summer:

Used more mulch (28 percent).

Used more drought-tolerant plants (17 percent).

Watered with drip irrigation (15 percent).

Used a rain barrel (12 percent).

Didn’t water at all (30 percent).

OK, not bad overall, but my concern is that on every water-conservation measure, the percentage was down — from two to five percentage points — from the 2010 survey. Is it a matter of awareness that peaked, then waned? Or is it simply an anomaly, something to attribute to the size or randomness of the sample surveyed? Probably not the latter, because GWA says that the sample balances the population geographically. In that case, we’ve got work to do to raise gardeners’ awareness of water conservation. That’s certainly a goal of this blog.

This rain barrel soon will connect to another barrel and we’ll add a third barrel on the southwest side of the house. One barrel can fill with a good summer rain.

Here are a few more findings to ponder, though. An additional 28 percent of respondents said “Didn’t think about it,” and 8 percent responded “not sure,” or refused to answer the question. So that means more than one-third of gardeners are doing nothing at all to conserve water in their lawns or gardens. It could be that many of those people, like a portion of the 30 percent who didn’t water, live in lush, rain-heavy areas that require no supplemental water. It made me think of how envious I would get when visiting the northeast or Hawaii. I get it; nature takes care of most of the watering there. Then again, the last time I went to Maui, restaurants only served water upon request because the island was experiencing a drought. That’s right. I know a tropical drought is not the same as a desert drought, but it’s all relative, and an island (even though surrounded by water) has finite resources.

Plants grow just about anywhere in Maui, even during a drought.

We’ll discuss more ideas of how to conserve water, including rain catchment and whether it’s a good idea not to water at all, in future posts. For now, I just really want to raise awareness. I’m not perfect in my conservation efforts either, but I’m learning more as I write these posts. And there’s a certain degree of natural conservation that comes with the territory when you live in the desert Southwest.